The final “Community Coffee with the Mayor” program of 2022 featured a look at Highlands Cashiers Hospital through the eyes of HCH Chief Executive Officer Tom Neal.
During his presentation at Hudson Library on Friday, Neal highlighted more than $9 million in investments made by parent company Hospital Corporation of America since Jan. 1, 2020. Those investments included capital improvements to the facility itself and equipment upgrades, which have allowed the hospital to restart its surgical program.
“Right now, we only do what most people would consider minor surgery, outpatient procedures, with our two surgeons who come to Highlands one day each month,” Neal said. “We are fortunate to have both a general surgeon and an orthopedic surgeon that come up the mountain and offer those services.”
Neal recapped some of the challenges the hospital, and the community as a whole, have dealt with since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I got to Highlands in December 2018 and I was so excited to get out and meet people in our service area,” Neal said. “Then COVID hit, and everything was put on hold. So I feel like I’m making up for lost time now that we are able to have public gatherings again.”
Highlands Mayor Patrick Taylor thanked Neal for his hard work developing Highlands COVID-19 vaccination clinic. The clinic, which was set up in the Highlands Rec Center, administered more than 14,000 COVID-19 vaccines.
“As awful as the pandemic was for all of us, the vaccination clinic did have some positive outcomes,” Neal said. “We were able to get 14,000 people vaccinated efficiently, and it gave me a chance to talk to many of those people while they were either waiting for their vaccination, or afterward while they sat in the post-shot waiting area to make sure they didn’t have a reaction.”
Neal noted that he gets two questions about the hospital more than any others.
“People know about the sale of Mission Health to HCA, and they know about the deal with the state that HCA has to keep all the facilities open a minimum of 10 years, so they want to know what happens in year 11,” Neal said. “Folks are also interested to know the differences between a ‘for profit’ hospital group like HCA and a ‘not for profit’ hospital.”
As healthcare continues to evolve on both a national and local level, Neal noted that it is getting harder and harder for hospitals to maintain operating without a corporate partner or parent company.
“We now have the biggest corporate hospital partner in the country with HCA,” Neal said. “I can’t tell you where our hospital would be right now without HCA, but I can tell you there would not have been $9 million invested in the facility in the past two years.”
Neal said he believes HCA’s new Angel Medical Center, which opened last month in Franklin, is a tool that will help Highlands Cashiers Hospital in the future.
“One thing we are always looking at is how to attract providers, and if you want to get a doctor excited about coming to an area, put him in a new patient room, or a new operating room, and Franklin has those,” Neal said. “Because they are a partner hospital of ours, and we do share some providers, a new facility is great for us. Anything that makes it easier to attract and keep doctors is a plus.”
A tight labor market has been felt across many industries over the past two years and Neal noted that healthcare is no exception.
“Workforce development and finding quality employees is something I always have an eye on,” Neal said. “During the pandemic we saw a number of resignations across healthcare, due to burnout, early retirements, and so on. And we are still trying to come back from that, whether its maintenance staff, janitorial, nurses aids, nurses, etc.”
Neal praised the hospital’s in-house Certified Nursing Aid program as being an asset to attract talented young people who may be interested in a healthcare career.
“We have two young people in the program right now that are going to go on to nursing school,” Neal said. “We love when students enter the program and get a feel for what healthcare is all about. We’ve also had people making career changes come into the CNA program, so it’s not just for recent high school graduates.”